The Little Prince
'"The Little Prince"' is the fourth episode of Season 5 of ''Lost, and the ninetieth episode of the series as a whole. It was originally broadcast on February 4, 2009. Kate discovers someone knows the secret of Aaron's true lineage. Meanwhile, the dramatic shifts through time place the lives of the remaining Island survivors in extreme peril. Synopsis Previously on Lost *Carole Littleton tells Jack her daughter, Claire, had been on his flight and was his half-sister. *In Los Angeles, Kate is visited by an attorney who claims to have a court order to conduct a blood test to determine if Aaron is actually Kate's child. Later, she frantically packs a bag, grabbing an envelope of cash and a gun. She tells Aaron that they are going "on vacation" before picking him up and leaving. She then later meets up with Sun. *Sayid is shot with an anesthetizing dart and taken to Jack by Hurley. *Richard tells Locke that the only way to save the Island is to get those who left to come back. *Charlotte begins bleeding profusely from her nose and collapses because of the time flashes. On the Island November 1, 2004 Sawyer, Locke, Juliet, Miles, Charlotte, and Daniel are at the Mesa after having time flashed from 1954. Dan manages to revive Charlotte, and Locke suggests that they travel to the Orchid in order to try to stop the time flashes. ♪ Locke tells Sawyer that he needs to get the Oceanic Six to come back. "Don't you want her to come back, James?" he asks Sawyer. ♪ Charlotte wakes from ten minutes of unconsciousness, and it takes her some seconds to orient herself. ♪ The group then leaves for the beach camp to sail the Zodiac raft toward the Orchid. ♪♪ After dark, while traveling through the jungle, the group sees a beam of light emanating from the ground some distance ahead. Recognizing it as the light which emanated from the Hatch, the night Boone died, Locke leads the group through a different route, circling and avoiding the light. A short while later, they hear a woman crying. Going to investigate by himself with the M1 rifle, Sawyer sees Kate assisting Claire while she gives birth to Aaron. Overcome with emotion at the sight of his lost love, Sawyer doesn't confront past-time-Kate and the moment is gone when the group shifts through time once more. ♪ 2007 or later Finding themselves in daylight once more, the group makes their way to the beach. Miles now appears to be suffering nosebleeds. He asks Daniel about it, and Daniel says it's related to how much time you spend on the Island. This confuses Miles, who points out that the survivors (who have not shown any symptoms to this point) had been on the Island for months before the freighter arrived. Daniel asks Miles if he is sure that he has never been on the Island before. On the beach, they find that the camp exists at that moment, but seems dishevelled, with a number of the structures in disrepair and all the supplies either stolen or consumed. With no one nor the Zodiac in sight, the group wonders where everyone has gone. Noticing a pair of wooden outrigger canoes, they speculate that the other survivors may have fled from attackers. Inside one of the canoes, Sawyer finds a water bottle with a label for Ajira Airways, which Juliet recognizes as an international airline based in India. They take one of the outriggers and begin paddling toward the Orchid. After a short while, they notice that unknown people are pursuing them in the other outrigger. As the other canoe gains on them, the people in it begin to shoot. After trying to escape for a while, Juliet started returning fire with a rifle, apparently hitting one of the pursuers. Before the pursuers can get any closer, there is another time flash. Sawyer exclaims, "Thank you, Lord!" The group reappears in the midst of a torrential storm, to which Sawyer then exclaims, "I take that back!" November 18, 1988 The survivors successfully come to shore at nightfall, and Sawyer and Juliet continue their conversation about Sawyer seeing Kate in the jungle. Sawyer says that he was close enough to speak to Kate, and Juliet asks why he didn't. Sawyer dejectedly states that "what's done is done." ♪ The conversation ends when Sawyer indicates to Juliet that her nose is bleeding. Charlotte then alerts the group to debris from a ship on the beach, noting that it appears to have wrecked recently. Locke identifies a canister with the word "bésixdouze" on it. Around the same time, a group of French-speaking men and women are in an emergency raft, weathering a storm. In the distance they see a man floating on a piece of debris. They paddle over to the man and pull him into the raft, revealing him to be Jin. By morning, the French group has reached the beach, where they offer Jin water. The team is attempting to locate the source of a transmission, wondering if the Island is inhabited. One of the men tries to question Jin about where he came from and how long he was in the water and is frustrated by his vague answers. One of the women, visibly pregnant, asks Jin his name, and then introduces herself as Danielle Rousseau, leaving Jin looking confused. ♪ Off the Island Flashback January 2, 2005 A few days after being rescued off the Island, Kate and Jack share a private moment on Penny's boat, the Searcher. ♪ Their discussion revolves around what to do with Aaron. Kate expresses that she wants to take care of him because, after losing so many people on the Island, she cannot bear to see any misfortune befall upon Aaron. ♪ Jack explains that he is going to try to convince everyone else to lie about the Island the next day, but needs Kate to back him up. He asks if Kate will be with him, to which she answers that she has always been with him. 2007 After borrowing a black suit from Sun, Kate leaves Aaron with her at the hotel. As soon as Kate leaves, Sun receives a package from an unknown source. The package consists of a surveillance report, a box of Godiva chocolates with a hidden gun inside, and photos of Jack and Ben in front of the Hoffs-Drawlar funeral home. Kate meets with lawyer Dan Norton at his office, offering to provide her and Aaron's blood if Norton will tell her who his client is. He says that she is in no position to bargain and that she will lose custody. Meanwhile, Jack is reviving Sayid at the hospital. Sayid wants to leave, but Jack says he's been unconscious for over 42 hours with a strong dose of horse tranquilizers. The Chief of Clinical Services on the medical staff calls Jack out of the room and berates him, reminding him that he's been suspended for substance abuse and that the hospital is responsible. A nurse comes to give Sayid medication, but Sayid recognizes this as an ambush and moves from the hospital bed just as the nurse attempts to shoot him with a dart gun. After disabling the gunman and choking him, he demands to know who sent him. The man gestures to an address in his pocket. Sayid then shoots him twice with the dart gun. Jack's phone rings: it's Hurley, who is at the county jail in an orange jumpsuit and seems very happy. Jack tells Hurley says Sayid is okay. Hurley says to tell Sayid that he followed his advice (in , Sayid cautioned Hurley to do the exact opposite of whatever Ben requested of him.). Ben arrives. As they return to Sayid, Sayid glares at Ben and they get the piece of paper from the attacker's pocket. It has an address that Jack recognizes as Kate's. Jack calls her and persuades her to tell him where she is so he can meet her. Ben wants to go get Hurley, but Sayid doesn't want Ben near him. Sayid relents but insists on driving. Ben tells Jack to get Kate and meet them at Long Beach Marina, slip 23, and to hurry. ♪ Kate and Jack follow Dan Norton from his offices to a motel near LAX. Concluding that Norton's mysterious client must be there, they watch as he goes to a room. When the door opens, they see Carole Littleton inside. Concluding that Ms. Littleton intends to gain custody of Aaron, Kate attempts to flee, but Jack convinces her to allow him to talk to Ms. Littleton. When he does so, he discovers that Littleton has no knowledge of Aaron's existence—let alone his parentage—and was in town to settle a lawsuit against Oceanic Airlines. Upon learning this, Jack and Kate go to rendezvous with Ben, unbeknown to Kate that Norton is actually Ben's lawyer as well. Ben and Sayid meet Dan Norton in the police garage, where Dan informs Ben that the charges will be dropped against Hurley and that he should be out by the next morning. ♪ When Sayid asks who Dan is, Ben says he is his lawyer. Jack, Kate, Ben and Sayid meet up, but when Kate sees Ben, she looks very disturbed. ♪ Jack then tells her that Ben is with him and that he's there to help them and everyone they left behind. Kate then accuses Ben of trying to take Aaron. Jack dismisses it, but Ben quickly says that Kate is right and apologizes to Jack. ♪♪ Kate asks Ben why he doesn't just leave her and her son alone, to which Ben responds, "Because he's not your son, Kate." It is then revealed that Sun is observing them from a car, with Aaron sleeping in the back and her surveillance photos in the passenger seat. She gets her gun and steps out. Trivia *The name on the side of Ben's van, "Canton Rainier" is an anagram of "reincarnation." *Ajira Airways is mentioned for the first time in the series, after being a viral website for some time. *The discovery of the bottle and presence of the outriggers suggests the time-shifting survivors have moved into events taking place in the Island's future. * On the Searcher, Kate names Jin, Michael and Sawyer as examples of people they "lost" on the Island, although none of those people are technically dead. ** Jack points out that Sawyer is not dead, to which Kate responds that he is "gone". ** Jin survived the Kahana explosion, unknown to Jack and Kate. ** Michael never passed on and was instead trapped on the Island as part of the whispers. *One of the time shifts brings the characters to the time period of the first season, and original characters Boone, Shannon, Michael and Charlie are all referenced variously through the episode. *We learn that Jack was finally suspended from practicing at the St. Sebastian hospital because of substance abuse. *Dan Norton called Ben "Mr. Linus" in the police garage, which is the first time Ben is known to have used his true identity off the Island. *Sun's surveillance report is partly legible. It has since been discovered that the report is an altered version of a report from an online game unrelated to Lost. *When Kate tracks Dan Norton in Los Angeles, his car's license plate number is shown to be "4PCI382". This appears to be a number reserved for Hollywood productions, as it was also used by Ironhide, a GMC Topkick, in the 2007 movie Transformers. http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Image:MovieIronhidevsLost.jpg *For the translated French dialogue among the science team members, see the transcript of this episode. *This is the second time Jin has been adrift only to wake up without understanding the surrounding people's language. First time being in . *Jorge Garcia confirmed on his blog that it was him reading out the numbers in the transmission the French team picked up. However, Gregg Nations explained that this was an easter egg rather than a plot point. * This episode is rated TV-PG-LV. Production notes *Scenes from , specifically Aaron's birth, are reused in this episode. Emilie de Ravin as Claire Littleton makes her Season 5 debut, but only via archive footage since additional material uses a stand-in. Dominic Monaghan and Daniel Dae Kim, also present in the original scene, are not seen. ** Emilie de Ravin becomes the second and final former main character to appear uncredited in archive footage, after Kiele Sanchez in . *Although Nadine is uncredited in the ABC Medianet press release for this episode, there was a promotional still released by ABC Medianet showing all six science team expedition members and Jin here, which credited the four known team members and Daniel Dae Kim, as well as one "Alexandra Tabas". Since the two remaining team members are a man and a woman, Tabas is the actress depicting the woman. *A board in the writer's room seen in the "Building 23 & Beyond with Michael Emerson" feature notes this episode as Kate and Sawyer centric. However, in the episode itself only Kate has a flashback. *A Lost: On Location for this episode is available on the Season 5 DVD. *This was the first episode to be featured on Lost Untangled. Bloopers and continuity errors *When the left-behinds are walking through the jungle to the beach, Juliet's hair starts out in a bun, then when she talks to Miles it is seen with half of it pinned up, and when the survivors notice the hatch light, it is back in a bun again. *The light from the hatch the left-behinders see from afar looks more like the bright white light from the hatch after it had been blown open as seen in , rather than the dim yellow light from the hatch window Locke was able to look straight into at the end of . This has been confirmed as not having turned out quite as intended by the writers by script coordinator Gregg Nations.http://forum.thefuselage.com/showthread.php?t=107011 *When Kate and Jack arrive at the harbour, the Volvo grille emblem is assembled in the car's front, unlike in the previous scene. *The handwriting on the paper with Kate's address is different when Jack gives it to her and when Sayid finds it on Tony's wallet. *In the first of the scenes that show Locke and the others paddling on the water, a splash can be seen on the bottom from the boat that had the camera while filming. *The tranquilizer pistol that Tony tries to shoot Sayid with, which is a Palmer Cap-Chur #1400C - Short Range Projector, is breech-loaded and only capable of a single shot before having to be reloaded. He fires two shots, then Sayid fires two shots. *The legal situation Kate finds herself in is not actually possible. There is no provision for privacy when compelling a blood sample from anyone or for any reason: attorney-client privilege does not extend to this. Also, if Aaron were to be removed from her custody, she would have every legal right as the child's guardian (if not mother) to know the person or persons taking her child. ** Given that Dan Norton was working for Ben, it is plausible that he did not have an actual case, and was simply trying to scare Kate into cooperating. *When Jack walks in to see Carole Littleton, his suit is soaking wet; yet between shots, it instantly changes into a dry one for the rest of the scene. Analysis Recurring themes * Sun's pictures of Jack with Ben are in black and white. * After the flash while Locke, Sawyer, Miles, Charlotte, Juliet and Daniel are in the canoe, it begins to rain. * It is raining when Jack goes in to see Claire's mother. * Jack's phone number is written in black on Kate's cellphone screen which is white. * Claire is seen giving birth to Aaron. * Danielle is pregnant. * Jack is checking Sayid's eyes. * Hurley is in jail. * Sayid was unconscious for over 42 hours. * Kate's address is 42 Panorama Crest. * Ben and the Oceanic Six, except for Hurley, come together at slip 23 of the Long Beach Marina. * A recording of The Numbers being read out sequentially can be heard by the French scientist team on their radio. * Sun receives a box of confections containing 15 chocolates. * The raft of the Science expedition has 8 sides. * Juliet fired 4 shots at the people in the outrigger. * Present-time Jin, having just survived the explosion, meets (and recognizes) past-time-Rousseau at the sea. * Ben admits he was the one harassing Kate and Aaron with an ulterior motive. * Sawyer tries to cope with his inaction in contacting Kate by saying "What's done is done." * Miles calls the Oceanic survivors "yahoos." * Sawyer calls Locke "Johnny Boy." * Sawyer calls the unknown group that had attacked the beach camp "the other others." * The usually inscrutable Sawyer feels confident to open up his feelings to Juliet. * Once again, Locke implies he would die trying to save other people. * Dan Norton is the lawyer for both Ms. Littleton and Ben Linus. Cultural references * The Little Prince: The episode's title refers to the novel Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, a French writer and aviator who disappeared in flight in 1944. Though masquerading as a children's book, it has varied themes on life, perception and human nature. The book begins with its narrator surviving a plane crash in the desert. He encounters the Little Prince, a little boy who has left his home on asteroid B612 after finding that he could no longer share his tiny planet with his demanding rose, the only other sentient occupant. He left his planet to find out more about the universe, but ultimately learns that the actions of his rose, not her words, are what he should pay attention to. :* Saint-Exupéry illustrated the book and drew the Little Prince as a young, blond-haired child. Aaron Littleton is similarly portrayed. :* "Bésixdouze" ("B612"), the name of the expedition's lost boat, is a reference to the name of the asteroid on which The Little Prince lives. *''Yoknapatawpha County: Sun's surveillance report contains a reference to a Yoknapatawpha County Library. The fictional Yoknapatawpha County of Mississippi is the setting of many of the novels by American author William Faulkner (1897-1962). Literary techniques * Locke tells Sawyer that he needs to make the Oceanic Six come back, "even if it kills me." By this point, viewers have already seen that this will in fact result in Locke's death. * Sawyer speaks disparagingly about time travel while in the canoe with Juliet. However, soon after, time travel saves them from a gunfight, causing Sawyer to praise time travel. * Jin is actually alive, and was pulled out of the water by the science expedition team. * Tony, an assassin disguised as a nurse, tries to harm Sayid. He tells Sayid he does not have to give him a shot, then turns and attempts to shoot him twice with darts. * The storm in Los Angeles foreshadows the upcoming difficulties Jack and Ben will have trying to convince the rest of the Oceanic Six to return to the Island. * Dan Norton explains Hurley's innocence to Ben in front of Sayid, the actual killer. * While discussing what to do about Aaron, Jack tells Kate: "I can fix this." * Sun attempts to get revenge for the death of Jin, but may actually be interfering with her ability to be reunited with him. * The French team that rescues Jin turns out to be Rousseau's team. * Carole Littleton seems to be the person who is after Aaron's blood sample, but it is revealed eventually that it is Ben instead. * Ben goes to great lengths to remind Kate that Aaron is not her son while trying to exact revenge for the death of someone he falsely claimed to be his daughter. * Miles gets a nosebleed before Sawyer and Locke, even though he has only just arrived on the Island for the first time. Daniel asks "are you sure?" * Sawyer tells Juliet "what's done is done" in response to why he never tried to contact Kate during the flash. Storyline analysis *A hitman disguised as a nurse at the hospital attempts to abduct Sayid. *Locke and the other survivors start making their way to the Orchid, in order to stop the flashes. *Sawyer sees Kate during a time flash. Later, he confides in Juliet. Episode connections Episode references *Kate tells Jack that Claire was planning to give Aaron up for adoption. *The survivors time travel back to the night Aaron was born, and see the light from the hatch in the distance. *Kate notes that Jack shaved his beard since their last meeting. *Carole mentions Christian Shephard's funeral. *Locke says Ben left the Island using the Orchid. *The opening flashback takes place in the week spent on ''the Searcher. *Sun's surveillance reports include photos of Ben and Jack leaving the funeral parlor. *Kate confronts Dan Norton about his clients request for a blood sample. *In the opening flashback, Jack says he will have to convice everyone to lie, and he will turn to Kate first. Episode allusions *We finally meet the original members of Danielle's science expedition. *A member of Danielle Rousseau's team fiddles briefly with a radio and an automated voice can be heard reciting the Numbers. *After having been adrift, Jin awakes without understanding the surrounding people's language, as it happened to him after the raft was attacked by The Others. *Kate says Aaron is a good sleeper, as Claire once said to her. *Locke says he will get everyone back to the island, "even if it kills him," as Richard Alpert said. Unanswered questions *Who ransacked the beach camp? *Who were the pursuers in the outrigger? *Since Danielle met Jin in 1988 why didn't she recognize him in 2004? ar:الأمير الصغير da:The Little Prince de:5.04 Der kleine Prinz es:The Little Prince fr:5x04 he:הנסיך הקטן it:Il piccolo principe pl:The Little Prince pt:The Little Prince ru:Маленький принц zh:The Little Prince Category:Kate-centric Category:Episodes Category:Season 5 Category:Featured on Lost: on Location Category:Episodes that are Rated TV-PG-LV